Presently, in the board-level circuit and components assembly industry, solder printing techniques utilize one stencil to print solder paste on a printed circuit board (PCB) or to fill through holes in the PCB with solder material (print, fill, sweep, flow, roll, etc., are collectively taken to be a type of “patterning”). Because a vertical depth of the through holes is much greater than a low height of a solder-pad printed on a surface of the PCB, the stencil is expensive and complex to fabricate and then use. It is time consuming to use the stencil during board-level solder patterning because it takes longer to fill a through hole with solder than to print a thin solder pad on the surface of the PCB. Attempts to speed up the process leave solder patterns that are located imprecisely or through holes that have an inadequate amount of solder. Consequently, reducing the manufacturing speed, cost, solder smearing, and increasing the solder-location accuracy would benefit the method and system for patterning solder on a PCB or other types of boards that are used to mount or hold devices. Moreover, any other types of patterning techniques that involve different amounts of material (e.g. inks, pastes, etc.) into or on different surfaces should benefit from the techniques and system described below.